Looking For A Story About A Past Prophet

[Duncan]

In my haze of a memory I recall hearing a story about one of the Presidents of the Church who served a mission. On the ship's voyage over someone asked him what he was doing and he told them he was a Mormon missionary and was going to preach the Gospel to the good people of...and then this inquirer asked him a question from the Bible and he had no idea of what the answer was and so he said he spent the rest of the voyage reading the scriptures. Does this sound familiar? I think...it may have been Pres. McKay but can't find anything connecting him to it so I could be wrong, but it was someone who was on a ship going over the pond

[Stargazer]

I believe I know who and what you are talking about, but it wasn't on the ship over, it was in a street meeting in Hyde Park in London, and the individual in question spent his entire mission studying the scriptures so he would never again be stumped by a question. The story is available on YouTube, in a talk that Cleon Skousen gave many years later to a mission conference in Texas, and it he told the story in connection with his mission experience, and in order to talk about the meaning of the atonement. Some people have a bad attitude about Skousen, and some of those people have a bad attitude because they hate his politics. But this talk is about something not related to politics at all. He tells the story early in the talk. In the video below, you can jump to 5:15 to get in where he begins the story of his experience, but I suggest you listen to it from the beginning, since some of what he talks about requires a little bit of background that you might otherwise miss.

Now, the story in question proceeds into Part 2 (which will automatically track on, since the link below is to a playlist), and at at 3:00 in the second part is where he describes having started studying so he would never again be caught like he was in his first public preaching experience.

[media=]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqwlIP6-6gE&feature=share&list=PL20824313B28D9E50

It is of course possible that one of the Presidents had a similar experience, but I have not heard anything about it,

This entire talk is worth listening to, in my opinion.

Edited August 6, 2013 by Stargazer

[ERayR]

I believe I know who and what you are talking about, but it wasn't on the ship over, it was in a street meeting in Hyde Park in London, and the individual in question spent his entire mission studying the scriptures so he would never again be stumped by a question. The story is available on YouTube, in a talk that Cleon Skousen gave many years later to a mission conference in Texas, and it he told the story in connection with his mission experience, and in order to talk about the meaning of the atonement. Some people have a bad attitude about Skousen, and some of those people have a bad attitude because they hate his politics. But this talk is about something not related to politics at all. He tells the story early in the talk. In the video below, you can jump to 5:15 to get in where he begins the story of his experience, but I suggest you listen to it from the beginning, since some of what he talks about requires a little bit of background that you might otherwise miss.

Now, the story in question proceeds into Part 2 (which will automatically track on, since the link below is to a playlist), and at at 3:00 in the second part is where he describes having started studying so he would never again be caught like he was in his first public preaching experience.

[media=]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqwlIP6-6gE&feature=share&list=PL20824313B28D9E50

It is of course possible that one of the Presidents had a similar experience, but I have not heard anything about it,

This entire talk is worth listening to, in my opinion.

I really liked W. Cleon Skousen.

[Duncan]

Thank you! I think the story was about Pres. McKay, he wrote in his journal for Aug. of 1897 when he was sailing across the ocean that he knew nothing about the Bible. I had heard a more fleshed out version of it though, somewhere, somewhere I know I have!